LEE HARVEY AND THE CAMEL JOCK

I lived at home my first year of college.

I rode a bus to downtown Denver where I attended my freshman classes at University of Colorado extension.

The second year I left for Boulder.

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I had done so well my first year that I was given a $500 dollar grant that I didn't need to pay back.

This was 1967.

$500.00 in 1967 had the same buying power as $3,746.57 in 2018.

{SOURCE: DOLLAR TIMES}

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I went to Boulder to live in a dorm.

I wouldn't know who my roommate was for a few days.

His name was Michael Gould, from San Fernando, California.

He had a girlfriend back in San Fernando.

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If I was a nerd, then Michael was a jock, easy-going, with a sense of humor.

We got along.

Especially after I wrote a couple of his Freshman English papers.

His English teacher was the wife of my Shakespeare professor.

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I lived on the ninth floor of what is even to this day the tallest building in Boulder, Colorado.

It was called Williams Village.

Today it's called Stearns Tower.

It's fifteen stories tall.

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My tution paid for breakfast and dinner.

The food wasn't too bad.

One time at dinner, we were served enchiladas.

I remember I also had jello.

I proceeded to cut up my enchiladas and jello into small pieces.

One of the guys who lived on the same floor as me asked, “Do you cut up everything that you eat?

I replied, “Yes.”

He shook his head, which at this time was dripping wet from all of the hot sauce he had put on his enhiladas.

I forget his name, but he is the tallest man I've ever seen except for the famous Corn King.

He kept a lot of guns in his dorm room's closet.

He sometimes warned other card players when they made him mad that he would go get one of his guns.

I thought that was funny.

The guns' triggers were safety-locked, and he never went to get one.

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On Saturdays I watched one TV program in the dorm's Recreation Room:

Laugh In.

I didn't smoke or drink.

I never went to any parties.

No wonder I didn't have any friends.

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Well, I did go to one party.

A beer keg party.

I can't remember who took me to the keg party, or who brought me back to the dorm.

I borrowed one of the dorm's graduate student's John Hopkins pewter mug, and was warned not to lose it.

I'm lucky I didn't lose or forget it.

I was very inebriated when I left the party.

I went crazy when I got into the dorm's elevator...yelling and kicking.

When I finally made it to my room, I turned on the lights, and promptly went to my sleeping roommate and tried to push him off his bed. He sat up and lifted his right arm with a closed fist, ready to sock me, but then

started to laugh.

Lucky for me.

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I didn't get to know anyone on my floor of the dorm, or for that matter anyone at the university.

Michael and I didn't speak to each other very much.

I spent most of my time in the library away from all social interference.

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Two of the dorm tenants became known as camel jock and lee harvey.

Camel jock had a moustache, and was from the Middle East.

Lee harvey looked like Lee Harvey Oswald.

I thought both didn't deserve these titles, but they took it all in fun, at least on the outside.

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Nothing happened that was very exciting, except for the night that the male students snuck into the dorm of the female students, and sprayed their doors with whipping cream.

That was about it.

Then I moved somewhere else.

IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND DORM LIFE